As I know very little of this particular vehicle I have included the history notes from the box top here to hopefully give some background.
“In 1984, Otobreda Division of Alenia Difesa and the Defense Vehicles Division of Iveco formed a consortium to develop a new family of wheeled and tracked vehicles for the Italian Army, the B1 Centauro Tank Destroyer, the C1 Ariete MBT and the VCC-80 Dardo IFV.
In the same year, the Army's overall specification had the design work began
on many components and systems.
Otobreda had overall responsibility to develop the project of the C1 MBT,
with Iveco providing the power pack, the suspension system and other automotive
components.
The first prototype of the new main battle tank, now called Ariete ("ram" in
Italian),
the same name as the most important armored unit of the Army, was completed
in
1986. It was followed by the others in 1988 in order to allow the Italian
Army to begin a complete program of trials. As a result, an initial order
for 200 tanks was laced, to be followed by a second lot for a further 200
vehicles of an improved version.
The end of the Cold War and financial difficulties led to the cancellation
of the
second lot, while the production commenced with a low rate at the Otobreda
facility.
In La Spezia In 1995 only. The first production Ariete was completed at the end of 1995. Production was completed by early 2002 at a total program cost of around 970 million US dollars.”
The kit represents an early production Ariete as the gun and other details being changed on later models with the kit containing 229 parts moulded in olive green plastic plus a small sheet of clear plastic for the periscope optics, a length of twine and a small decal sheet plus of course the instruction sheet.
The parts are mostly cleanly moulded with crisp details and a minimum of pin marks that can be seen after assembly but there are some that will need filling on parts such as the towing shackles but nothing too taxing and most of the smaller parts are pin mark free.
The hull and turret feature some nice weld seams and other surface details such as the additional armour panels on the turret roof.
The large lower hull tub has all the suspension parts of axles, bump stops, return rollers and shock absorbers separate for good detail definition and will also allow the axles to be positioned for uneven ground if you wish?
The final drive housings and idler wheel mountings are also separate parts while the road and idler wheels have separate inner and outer wheels which feature nice hub and bolt head details with the idlers having a different hub than the road wheels so watch this when fitting as they are the same diameter.
The drive sprocket detail is quite good but not spot on if you want to get picky with the hub bolts being slightly too small and the outer ring bolt spacing being slightly out but unless you park the model next to the real thing this may not be at all noticeable?
The upper hull is a single moulding with separate rear engine deck and driver’s hatch and features crisp engraved details and weld seams on the top and very crisp exhaust louvers and wells seams on the side panels that do not suffer from the angles as obviously multi-parts moulds have been used.
The separate engine deck has a very nicely done central engine fan intake with very well represented meshing and the securing bolts are all recessed with crisp details as are the two inspection hatches and recessed lifting eyes. The fit of the engine deck to the rear hull is very snug and having the deck separate allows for the good details which wouldn’t have been possible if moulded with the full hull and also makes adding an engine easy if any aftermarket people are listening?
The separate driver’s hatch also has separate periscopes for good definition and the rear hull plate is also separate with many smaller separate fittings around the hull such as the head lights with separate covers, grab handles for the engine deck inspection doors and storage boxes and travel lock on the rear hull all of which have nice fine details included.
The full length side skirts are also separate with nice details and can be added later in the assembly if you want to leave off the tracks so they can be added later for ease of painting.
The tracks are vinyl rubber band type with nice details on both sides that look quite reasonable for this type of track and should scrub up okay after painting with the joining pins needing the use of a small heated screw driver head to melt together.
The turret shell is very well done with again the use of multi-part moulds to allow good crisp details on the top and sides which includes the side weld seams, shell ejection door on the left and tool mounting plates as well as the smoke grenade mountings with separate grenades and crisp bolt head and additional armour panel detail on the roof as well as open periscopes on the Commander’s and Loader’s hatches with clear inserts provided as well as separate top hatch ring and separate three part hatches with separate main sighting box and Commander’s panoramic sight for good detail definition as well as very fine grab handles for the rear turret panels.
The rear storage basket has a separate rear panel with added details and all the tools mounted on the turret sides are separate parts with the 120mm gun split vertically in the normal manner with well shaped fume extractor and muzzle reference system at the tip.
A nicely detailed MG3 is provided for the Loader’s hatch ring as well as other smaller detail parts for a nicely detailed turret assembly.
The small decal sheet has basic markings for two vehicles although no units or other information is given with a five view illustration in the instructions and colour plates on the box sides to help with painting which shouldn’t be that hard as it’s in all over olive drab.
Overall a nicely detailed kit with crisp well defined details on the hull and turret with most smaller details as separate parts and should build into an attractive model and Trumpeter are to be congratulated for releasing this kit that will fill a void in the ranks of modern MBTs and a nice departure from the usual M1s, Leopards and C2s and I suspect we could well see some update sets coming with the parts to depict an Ariete serving in Iraq to add more interest.
Detail Images
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 MBT Ariete Large Photo File No 1 By Daniele Guglielmi Published by Auriga Publishing International SRL, Genova, Italy ISBN 88-88711-21-X A5 landscape 78 pages |